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A Literary Footnote to a Fire: John Galt

By David W. Dunlap August 23, 2007 12:45 pmAugust 23, 2007 12:45 pm

Who is John Galt?

The first line of Ayn Rand’s 1957 tome “Atlas Shrugged.”

Fifty years ago, Ayn Rand opened “Atlas Shrugged” with that question, and readers spent the next 1,009 pages wondering. This week, New Yorkers wondered the same thing, as the John Galt Corporation of the Bronx, the demolition subcontractor at the former Deutsche Bank building opposite ground zero, came under intense scrutiny following a fire in the tower in which two firefighters were killed.

If the Bronx company had taken the name of its principals, it would have been called Blinn & Mazzucca.

Readers have asked: Was the company intentionally named instead for Rand’s heroic engineer and inventor, John Galt, who seeks to upend and remake American society?

John Galt Corporation executives, however, were not speaking publicly about the provenance of the name. Or anything else.
So it is left to City Room to speculate on the corporate credo of a company with the name John Galt. The task is made easier because he speaks for himself in a seemingly endless radio address to the nation near the apocalyptic finale of the 1,168-page novel. (Consider this a spoiler alert for those who missed reading the book in college).

Here are some excerpts:

Building is not done by abstaining from demolition; centuries of sitting and waiting in such abstinence will not raise one single girder for you to abstain from demolishing . . . .

I am the man whom you did not want either to live or to die. You did not want me to live, because you were afraid of knowing that I carried the responsibility you dropped . . . .

But you, you grotesque little atavists, stare blindly at the skyscrapers and smokestacks around you and dream of enslaving the material providers who are scientists, inventors, industrialists.

. . . [Y]ou, who scorn a businessman as ignoble, but esteem any posturing artist as exalted — the root of your standards is that mystic miasma which comes from primordial swamps, that cult of death, which pronounces a businessman immoral by reason of the fact that he keeps you alive.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

When some barefoot bum in some pesthole of Asia yells at you: How dare you be rich — you apologize and beg him to be patient and promise him you’ll give it all away.

No value is higher than self-esteem . . . .

As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man’s demand for your help.

This country — the product of reason — could not survive on the morality of sacrifice.

Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality — to think, to work and to keep the results — which means: the right of property.

But you expect industrial giants — who plan in terms of decades, invest in terms of generations and undertake ninety-nine-year contracts — to continue to function and produce, not knowing what random caprice in the skull of what random official will descend upon them at what moment to demolish the whole of their effort.

With the sign of the dollar as our symbol — the sign of free trade and free minds — we will move to reclaim this country once more from the impotent savages who never discovered its nature, its meaning, its splendor.

Whether or not John Galt was based on the Ayn Rand novel, Doctoroff’s disdain for public input comes from the same literary mindset. “Environmental oversight” and “Environmental Impact Statements” have become pure fiction in this administration.

How can anyone over the age of 16 hope to get away with a smear like “how can anyone over the age of 20 take this book seriously?”? I’m 63 (and have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia) and I assure you I have been taking it *very* seriously, for 45 years now.

35 and still not only taking Atlas Shrugged seriously but living the principles of Objectivism that were laid out by Ayn Rand. The age of the adherents is no more a determinate of the truth or falsehood of an idea than the number of the adherents to an idea.

He who does not take the lessons taught in Atlas Shrugged seriously does so (or does not do so, whatever) at his peril. Those who want to believe that the world can not only continue to exist but continue to renew and perpetuate itself where producers are mooched and looted at will by non-producers are not only ignorant, but willfully so, and deliberate ignorance is the greater evil (and as Rand does, so do I use the word ‘evil’ deliberately and advisedly.)

I don’t know who KT is, but I’ll be happy to respond to Rose’s challenge.

First, all redistributive taxation is the explicit looting of the productive for the sake of the less productive or non-productive. What do you think progressive taxation means? All welfare programs are the forced transfer of money earned by some people to the unearned benefit of those who haven’t produced it.

Second, every single “alphabet” agency (SEC, FDA, FTC, etc.) is of this sort: their paternalism sacrifices the responsible, rational, productive individuals to the irresponsible and irrational. E.g., *you* are legally barred from buying drugs that the FDA hasn’t decided are good for you, and from investing in ways the SEC hasn’t issued a “nihil obstat” on. Why is your freedom abnegated? In order to protect the lazy, shiftless, and/or whim-driven from the consequences of their own bad choices. All paternalistic legislation does likewise.

The entire realm of antitrust law is exactly the punishment of the productive for being too productive.

What about claims that there is a “right” to medical care? Provided by whom? Well, by tax money of course. Where does that tax money come from? From the income of the productive. Where does it go to? To those who are either unproductive across the board, or, at minimum, haven’t produced the money they are getting–that’s why they are getting it! Every “Robin Hood” measure of the modern welfare state consists of extracting money by force from those who have earned it and showering it upon those who have not.

As to the “mooching” aspect, consider the fact that wealthy individuals, from Ford and Carnegie to Bill Gates, feel obligated to “give something back.” Gates has announced he’s giving billions and billions to charity–why? He apparently feels the need to atone for the “sin” of producing great wealth. The rich themselves believe they are exploiters, rather than traders who provide value for value. Why is Mother Teresa considered a saint but the great industrialists considered “robber barons”? Because of the moral code of the mooucher: altruism. Altruism, the doctrine that selfless service to others is man’s duty, is what Atlas Shrugged was written to demolish. Or, more positively, it was written to dramatize a new morality of rational selfishness.

I might also add that the moochers beg, whine, and moan to be given that which they have not earned or produced themselves (the shiftless, short-sighted, the self-indulgent, etc.) The looters do so at the point of the sword (the government.) In the end, both actions place a drag on production adn the will to innovate, which is the real life-blood of an economy, without which it will wane and, eventually, die.

This is why all engineered economies (Communism, Socialism, etc.) will and must fail every single time they are tried. They operate on the assumption that a man will work just as hard for the welfare of others as he will for his own, and that flies directly in the face of millenia of human evolution. It just simply flat-out isn’t true, and goes against everything we know about human nature.
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What is the purpose of this article? To imply that anyone who agrees with the excerpts from Galt’s speech is naturally the type who would let a damaged building in the process of being demolished become unsafe for firefighters while on fire?

Perhaps if city room really wants to know “Who is John Galt?” they will think long and hard about the reasons why John Galt corporation had to be called to Deutsche Bank in the first place.

There is a lot of blame for the Deutsche Bank debacle. Start with the Leave Manhattan Destroyed Corporation, a collection of bureaucrats and political hacks appointed to do what none of them could do: rebuild the WTC. And their Listening To the City dog and pony shows? The deaf leading the blind. Incompetence raised to its highest level.

The LMDC choose Bovis Lend Lease. Bovis chose John Galt Corporation. The Department of Buildings issued a license to John Galt Corporation. None these organizations apparently investigated the credentials of John Galt Corporation.

The NY Fire Department failed to inspect the building as required by law. And the NYFD reportedly had no plan, repeat NO plan, to fight a fire in the building. Have they learned nothing since 9/11?

And let us not forget Dan “The Man With a Plan to Destroy Your Neighborhood” Doctoroff who has his fingerprints on this and every other citywide development debacle.

Nobody wants to talk about it, but the Deutsche Bank building could probably have been repaired.

John Galt Corporation had safely taken down the building from its 41 stories to its present 23. No one wants to give them credit for this.

Two mayors, the governor and the society at large caved to the merchants of grief. So, instead of two magnificent new twin towers, we’ll have a flightless bird, wading pools, a fraudulent tower sitting on Kelly’s Bunker, dancing on “holy ground,” and a group of stunted little buildings that are put to shame by the grand skyscrapers of the City. And one of Archiwreck Frank Gehry’s tumors.

Instead of a celebration of man’s greatness, we have a cemetery. Truly disgraceful.

In addition to asking Who is John Galt, one might in this context ask, Where Is Howard Roark? We need him and his ideas badly (which means we need Ayn Rand’s ideas). As Roark said in The Fountainhead, “The world is perishing from an orgy of self sacrificing.” In Iraq and at Ground Zero.

Hey, Mr. Binswanger, are you for the military? Do you think our taxpayer-funded military should be abolished in favor of an all-mercenary force, and are you willing to subscribe to it?

If not, you need to think harder about consistency before regurgitating arguments that were tiring thirty years ago. But if so, I fail to see how you think health care is a danger to society more deserving of your ire than the billions and billions shoveled into the Iraq War after being extorted from you, and borrowed from China (the payments to be extorted from your descendents, assuming you are altruistic enough to procreate.) Either way, your priorities need some reexamination.

I enjoyed Ayn Rand’s books, sure. Read’em both straight through, though I prefer The Fountainhead. But I see no reason to base my life on them any more than I see it’s rational to learn to ride sandworms and eat spice until my eyes turn blue. They’re fiction.

See, in real life, there is a great deal of interconnectedness in a healthy society. A lot of that interconnectedness is altruistic in nature, yes — but if you truly prefer living in a society with no subsidized roads and schools, no FDA food inspection, no military to keep your fuel cheap, and so forth, then I humbly suggest that America just isn’t your cup of tea, and you should book a one-way to the Third World. Afghanistan might suit you rather nicely.

It gives me no end of pleasure in this instance to say, “America — love it or leave it.”

Having just completed Atlas Shrugged and deciding to have been moved by what I’ve read and to attempt to apply Rand’s principles to my life, if only in some small way, I am infinitely curious as to what Mr. Binswanger will post in reply to Michael Roberts! I want desperately to agree with Mr. Binswanger, however, Mr. Roberts has brought up an interesting argument. Didn’t Ayn Rand make it her goal to come to America because she saw it as an ideal in the first place? Does that mean that, in her eyes, our country has been in a downward spiral, what with all of our subsidies and federal aid programs? Someone help this non-intellectual wrap her mind around this…

>Montgomery Burns played completely straight in 1,000 pages of sub-par prose. How can anyone over the age of 20 take this book seriously?

A. That is not an argument, that’s the fallacy of the Argument from Intimidation.

B. I can and do. I’ve used the philosophy of Objectivism to live by successfully for 20+ years (age 46).

C. If that’s all you got out of Atlas Shrugged, that’s pretty sad, because you missed the point. The point is that the mind cannot be forced and is the motor of all that is good; exactly how is that illustrated by Montgomery Burns?

The purpose of the Government is to facilitate the communication between people and corporations, and to protect its citizens.

We can argue for years as to whether or not the Iraq War is protecting US citizens, but there are many who know that it does.

Your entire argument is a strawman: Binswinger never said -anything- about Iraq or infrastructure, and you never responded to any of his points about social programs.

So roads, telephone lines, the US Postal Service, fiber optic cables, etc, fall under ‘Infrastructure’ and under the facilitation of communication and transportation between corporations and people. As for schools, I would personally classify public schools as infrastructure, although I cannot speak for Binswinger.

The government steps over the lines when it starts to hamper how corporations and individuals can interact with each other and hamper how successful corporations can be, rather than facilite these things.

The FDA and Health Inspection agencies are wonderful, and either one is only called into question when there is an incident, the exception being drugs that have to -first- meet FDA approval before being sold. This could be classified under “protection of citizens.”

Why doesn’t Health Care fall under this then? There is a difference between protecting someone from something, and helping them out when they mess up or something unfortunate happens. The government works for the former: it regulates food and roads to minimize tragedy. It protects us from foreign invaders. It even protects our property through the police force. But just because something unfortunate happens, like you get sick or you chainsaw your leg off or you make a bad business decision and your business goes under, it is not the government’s job to save you and give you a paycheck and pay for your health care bill. That is your responsibility.

Furthermore, objectivists like myself -love- America, and more specifically, love what it was. Think about what made this country great: the Railroad tycoons, oil tycoons, steel tycoons of the turn of the century… the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Hearsts. The industrial age was founded from their minds. America was great because men like them can become great and make the country great in the process. In true capitalism, the only way to succeed is to bring up a bunch of people along with you, your employees, your customers, and your trading partners will profit as you do and your business grows.

Recently, I went on a mission trip to Haiti. It was hell there. I came back, and realized everything I take for granted… running water, electricity, my cell phone, my laptop, the internet, my car, my DVDs, everything. I just listed products who probably contain parts from about 1,000 various corporaions. America is great because of its corporations, because of its system of economy, because of its nature of self-reliace. If America has started to fall, it is because of a deviation from these principles, and the move towards social programs. What happened to all the steel mills in Pittsburg? They were forced to leave due to taxes and unions. The American Auto Industy is being leeched to death, every drop of blood sucked out as it rots away by the unions. Newark and Detroit and Minneapolois and Pittsburg were once great cities… shining examples of productivity and industry… and now they are slums and ghettos, the only signs of industry the corpses of factories that once pumped life into the city like beating hearts. Every instance of a social program in history has been shown to be an abyssymal failure. From the Bread and Circuses of Rome to Communism in the USSR, to the ‘New Deal’ which kept our nation in a depression for years, to the socialist Norweigen Countries that are finding themselves bankrupt, to the workers unions that have choked our corporations dry, to the welfare programs that turned our major cities into ghettos, to the social security crisis we are now facing. How can someone say “The problem is that we aren’t giving enough. We need even larger social programs.” with a straight face while looking at history at all?

Indeed, I think the people who champion the social programs are the ones who don’t like America. Haven’t you heard these people say “We should be more like Europe.” Why? Are they better than us? They sure weren’t in 1905. They sure weren’t 20 years ago. They aren’t now. To become more like Europe is to hamper ourselves, is to go in the other direction, to continue down this road of socialistic tendancies and to lead our great country into doom. Europe has aspired to be more American for the last 150 years… why should we be aspiring to be more like them?

In closing, I want to reiterate that Objectivists do not dislike America by any means. We love it. Ayn Rand fell in love with it over half a century ago, and I still feel like a high-schooler who just found his first love when I think of our great country. But I wish to show everyone what makes it great and I wish to save it from the destruction that has befallen it.

I’m bored by the challenges made by readers who have nothing better to do than contest the quality of inspiration gained from Atlas Shrugged. Those who are not inspired by Atlas Shrugged ought to do better than question those who are.

I’ve only heard Joe Wright talk about the John Galt Corp Fire. Does anybody else find this interesting?

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